Thermaltake BlacX eSATA USB Docking Station

Comment: I got the BlacX Duet (model ST0014U) to back up my hard drives when my primary computer stopped booting. Connected via USB and have not had any problems whatsoever. Have been able to look at and copy data off two drives at once - very easy to use. Was even able to get data off a hard drive that the old computer says is completely corrupted. Not using this for permanent connection to the hard drives so I'm not sure about others issues but this one has been working perfect for what I need. I've not used for hd over 500 gigs but the box for the duet says this one supports SATA hard drives up to 2TB.

Comment: This product did not work for me. I bought it because my laptop died and I had no way to access the data.

After reading all the 5-star reviews I decided to buy it. Unfortunately, this device did not work. For some reason it kept disconnecting. I went to device manager to re-install the drivers but that did not solve the problem.

My hard-disks would show up for a couple of seconds before it disconnected. After visiting countless sites and spending over 6-hours trying to get it to work, I finally gave up and applied for refund.

Comment: Before buying this, I read most of the reviews here and elsewhere. I always look for validation of a reviewers raves or rants and I was concerned about the strong rants against the BlacX. After much research and comparison to other brands and their reviews, I bought a BlacX N0028USU... mainly because the rants against it were no worse than the rants against all other brands.

However, it wasn't long before I started to worry this purchase was a mistake because it behaved like a lot of the complaints posted here... my PC recognized it ONCE and then not again. So then I tried it with a newer PC and it worked better. OK... must be a quirk of the older BIOS on the 1st PC. Flashed an update on the old PC... no better. So I searched Themaltake's site for some clues or help. Not much luck. After several days of struggling with it, I tried several Google searches and discovered a driver at Thermaltake's site that I had not found before. It TOTALLY solved all the issues I was experiencing. I am now using it with several drives and 2 different PCs, all with no problems whatsoever.

As for all the claims of this box dying suddenly after a few weeks... I can't say. But as of right now (a little over a week old) I am very happy with it. SO I give it 4 stars because it ended up being a great piece of hardware. If it had started that way right out of the box, I would give it 5.

Comment: Thermaltake BlacX eSATA USB Docking Station

Very good, I wish I had known about this a year ago.
Worked perfectly.

You do need your motherboard configured for eSATA AHCI mode for it to be detected for hot plug connecting.
Other wise, using the SATA cable, you have to power up the computer with it connected and on to be detected.
Speed using the eSATA connection is the same as the internal drives.

On my computer with with the newer drives USB maxes out at 35 mb/sec. eSATA connection is about 125 mb/sec.
Some old SATA drives are at 70 mb/sec with the SATA cable. USB remains the same.

Amazon's price is about 1/2 of Best Buy for the same product.

I recommend it in spite of it being plastic.

Also it uses the same external power supply as some of my external drives, 12VDC/2AMP, so I didn't even use it's power supply, but used the one connected to my UPS that I use for my other external drives.

I haven't tried it on the 2.5 inch drives as the only ones I have are PATA interface.

Comment: I have been using the BlacX for five months now and it has given solid performance.

I'm using it with Linux (Debian Stable (Lenny)) via USB. There were no driver issues, I plugged it into USB and it was immediately recognized as a USB storage device. Plugged in a drive, partitioned, formatted and mounted it without a hiccup.

I use it for an off-site backup, so I swap drives once a week.